“Surely she comes to mind with gutsy women, even if you didn’t like her?” Barnett asked Clinton.
In response to the inquiry, Clinton, who lost the election that would have made her the first female president of the United States in 2016, said that Thatcher doesn’t fit “the other part of the definition”.
“She does, but she doesn’t fit the other part of the definition in our opinion, which is really knocking down barriers for others and trying to make a positive difference,” Clinton said. “I think the record is mixed with her.”
Margaret Thatcher: Life in pictures
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Thatcher, the daughter of a greengrocer, was elected prime minister in 1979. She won three national elections and was given the nickname “The Iron Lady,” before resigning in 1990. She died in 2013, at the age of 87.
Clinton continued, adding that although she thought Thatcher was “incredibly strong” and that it was “clever of her to really try to mould herself to be more acceptable” in terms of hairstyle, speaking style, and clothing style, she did not fit the book’s criteria.
Hillary Clinton's life in pictures
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“I think on the criterion that we were really looking at: ‘Okay, what were the positive differences, the changes this person made that really opened the doors to more?’ That wasn’t really that apparent,” she explained.
The former presidential candidate’s comments regarding the former prime minister were met with shock and confusion on social media.
“Ridiculous reason about Thatcher,” one person wrote on Twitter. “Love her or hate her, she became the first British PM and that in itself broke down all sorts of walls and gave hope to women who didn’t think achieving such a position was possible.”
Another said: “Yeah, all Thatcher did was help take down one of the most repressive regimes in modern world history. In Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton’s minds, apparently that wasn’t ‘making a positive difference’ for women.”
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